In the year since Carrie Klaege
moved to Arizona and started a non-profit program to help poor
women afford abortions, she’s watched access to the procedure
get tougher for her clients.

Following a rash of new laws, abortions are no longer
available at clinics outside Tucson and Phoenix and women must
wait 24 hours after required ultrasound tests before terminating
pregnancies -- forcing some to travel hundreds of miles and stay
overnight. Klaege said she’s now making connections in other
states where she could send women if the courts allow a ban on
later abortions to take effect. . . .

A group of Roman Catholic nuns in central Ohio has produced a short anti-contraception video hoping to get it in front of Catholics in all 50 states, starting with swing states, before the presidential election.

The "You Deserve to Know the Truth: Contraception" video, posted on YouTube by The Children of Mary order, invokes a number of statistics, studies and comments -- even lyrics to the Bloodhound Gang's “The Bad Touch."

The video opens by saying oral contraception can make women less desirable by interfering with chemical hormones. . . .

Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin disclosed Friday that he was arrested more than two decades ago at an anti-abortion protest.

His remarks came after Right Wing Watch, an arm of the liberal People for the American Way, circulated a video in which Akin is talking to a group of people about the arrest. The video was captured in 2011, the organization claimed. . . .

Despite fears that the Canadian Conservative government was
attempting to reopen the abortion issue, which was settled by the
Supreme Court while Brian Mulroney was in power in 1988, the Canadian
Parliament handily defeated the motion 203-91. The 91 votes in favour of
the motion were registered by conservative Members of Parliament.

The conservative government in Canada was accused of wanting to reopen the debate in order to undermine Canada's liberal abortion law. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who voted against the motion, had said all along that he had no interest in reopening the debate. . . .

Trust Women Foundation, a non-profit abortion-rights group, has
purchased Dr. George Tiller's former Wichita abortion clinic, which had
been on the market ever since Tiller was murdered at church by an
anti-choicer.

This is fantastic news, since Kansas only has three
abortion clinics, and all of them are in the Kansas City area. Thanks
to new state restrictions, the much-needed clinic won't offer the
controversial late term abortions of Tiller's day, but they will perform
first and early second trimester abortions. . . .

Uruguayan lawmakers have very narrowly approved a bill allowing women limited access to abortion. As the Los Angeles Times reports, it's a big change for a country that outlaws the procedure. Should it take effect, Uruguayan women can legally terminate their pregnancies in the first 12 weeks.

This response to Professor
I. Glenn Cohen’s article, Regulating Reproduction: The Problem with Best
Interests, argues that rules restricting whether, when, or with whom a person
reproduces serve an important societal purpose and need not be abandoned simply
because they cannot technically be supported by a “best interests of the
resulting child” (“BIRC”) rationale due to the “non-identity” problem. The
non-identity problem refers to the fact that such rules could result in a
particular child not being conceived at all, or in the creation of a different
child at another time. While Professor Cohen correctly notes that such rules
might be misunderstood to suggest that some human lives are “not worth living,”
this response proposes that it is possible – and necessary – to avoid that
unacceptable message, without at the same time accepting the extreme conclusion
that adults need never constrain their behaviors respecting conception. This
result can be achieved by re-conceiving the BIRC rationale as an effort to
remind parents – prior to the moment when parenting begins (conception) – of
what the law both needs and assumes them to be: fit parents who act in their
children’s best interests. The state should retain the ability to exhort adults
that a child’s future flourishing is influenced by the parents’ situation at
the moment of conception – e.g. the parents’ age, marital status, and any kin
relationship, among other factors – and reproductive regulation often serves
this important objective.

A New York City pilot program to distribute morning-after
pills and other contraceptives to high school students has encountered little
resistance from parents since it began early last year, health officials said
Sunday.

The officials said the program was an expansion of a similar
program run by privately operated school-based health centers around the city
for several years. The newer program uses doctors from the health department,
who prescribe contraceptives, and school nurses. . . .

More than three decades
after the birth of the first child conceived through in vitro fertilization,
few states have comprehensive statutes to establish the parentage of children
born using assisted reproduction techniques (ART). While thousands of such
children are born each year, courts struggle to apply outdated laws. For
example, does a statute terminating paternity for a man who donates sperm to a
married woman apply if the woman is unmarried? In 2008, the Uniform Probate
Code (UPC) added two much-needed sections on the complicated parentage and
inheritance issues that arise in the field of assisted reproduction. Yet it is
unclear whether states will enact these new UPC sections; few states have
enacted comparable provisions of the Uniform Parentage Act (UPA). The issues
can be controversial, particularly regarding children born years after an
intended parent’s death, or when the discussion turns to enforcement of a
contract for a gestational carrier, the preferred term for a surrogate mother.

This article explores the legal landscape for children conceived through
assisted insemination (AI), in vitro fertilization, intracytoplasmic sperm
injection, and other techniques. The article discusses the differences between
the UPA and UPC sections that concern assisted reproduction. It examines the
critical normative and ethical questions answered by these statutes and
analyzes the likelihood that states will adopt either uniform act. The article
looks briefly at gestational carrier agreements to consider whether and how
they should be enforced. The article concludes by noting the need for
legislation, the virtues of the UPC over the UPA, and the hope that states will
address all those who use ART, including gay and lesbian couples, and single
parents.